Want real education reform? Then Sacramento policy makers need a way around local union contracts that prevent the dismissal of ineffective teachers, the leading barrier to improved student performance. School choice is the only real answer.

On November 14, veteran Sacramento Bee political columnist Dan Walters wrote a very perceptive column on education "reforms" that usually come out of Sacramento.  According to Walters: "We – via our politicians and education leaders – flit from nostrum to panacea, from smaller class sizes to high school exit exams, while refusing to broach such taboo subjects as union contracts that make it difficult to assign the most experienced teachers to the most difficult schools and students. The educational establishment, meanwhile, monotonously chants that any academic improvement must begin with massive increases in school financing that, in the absence of some immense tax increase, are not in the cards."

Walters is dead on.  PRI's recent book Not as Good as You Think: Why the Middle Class Needs School Choice devotes an entire chapter to restrictive teacher union contracts in middle-class school districts that keep bad teachers in the classroom.  One contract, for example, prevents principals from going into the classroom to observe the performance of teachers and prohibits the use of any student achievement data to evaluate teacher performance.  Given that teacher quality has the biggest impact on student learning, such contracts virtually guarantee lower student performance.  In a September debate held in Sacramento and sponsored by George Mason University's Mercatus Center, I made a point similar to Walters': policy tweaks proposed by Sacramento politicians, such as jiggling funding formulas, will have little impact because union contracts prevent the dismissal of poor performing teachers, who are the number one obstacle, according to school principals, to improved student performance.

How does one get around union contracts?  Give parents of all socio-economic backgrounds real school choice, whether that be expanded charter schools that don't have to abide by union contracts or vouchers that allow parents to send their children to non-union private schools.  If Sacramento lawmakers want to address the problem cited by Dan Walters, then school choice is the only real answer.